Person A: “I can’t believe you’re so stupid”
Person B: “Oh yeah, because you’re real clever” (Sarcasm)
Person A: “What’s that quote? ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit’”
Person B: “Well Oscar Wilde said, ‘quotation is a substitute for wit’” (Irony)

While the Americans clearly do understand Irony and Sarcasm (And have bread some of the great examples of it Frasier, MASH, Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce ect) I do believe we use it in different ways.
Firstly I would say that Sarcasm is a simpler more obvious form of Irony. And most Americans use sarcasm much more then they do Irony.
In the UK we have the saying “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”. And from my time spent in America, I do find that Americans make it much clearer that they are using sarcasm, by overstating it or appending “Just kidding”.
British irony and sarcasm is alot stealthier and dry, preferring to run under the surface (probably because we are more emotionally reserved/repressed) The idea being, the less obvious a joke, the more funny it is.

Americans are much more comfortble in directly expressing emotions, therefore they tend to use irony as a comedy show piece. Where as in the UK, we tend to use it as a trojan horse, to get across some point without alarming too many emotional trip wires.

Regarding Alanis, I used to laugh about how the only thing ironic about that song was that nothing in it was ironic, but then I saw an interview where she addressed that and said something to the effect of “yeah, I know that now, but I was just a kid then.”

Thanks for sharing the Pegg link, that’s great!

Thanks for this–thought this was fascinating. It is shocking and a bit hilarious to find out just how dumb the rest of the world thinks we are!

I was searching for this post again to forward to a friend, and came across this related discussion of British vs. American humor by Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead): http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/feb/10/comedy.television

I assume that this myth predates Alanis’s infamous song–Have you seen Irish comedian Ed Byrne’s bit?: “The only ironic thing about that song is it’s called ‘Ironic’ and it’s written by a woman who doesn’t know what irony is. That’s quite ironic.” Byrne then tries to give the song ‘the benefit of the doubt’ by coming up with scenarios where the various unfortunate incidents, mentioned in the song, actually would represent irony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg [H/T Wikipedia]

Yeah, that’s what I was clarifying in my response to you (I can see how my post might be unclear in this regard): the professor explicity used the “late to class” scenario as an example of irony, and she said that it was not an example of sarcasm. At any rate, “irony” vs “sarcasm” wasn’t the point of my post. My point was, at the very least, that Americans would understand the “late to class” example to mean the opposite of what the words suggest at face value. It was hilarious to me that someone would think that an American wouldn’t get that.

In this context, you can call it “irony” (as the teacher did) or “sarcasm” (as you are, and as I usually would and will continue to do), but either word is fine. I also thought it was funny when she said, essentially, “Jon Stewart is really using more sarcasm than irony, while my example of the late student is irony, not sarcasm.” I would call both sarcasm, because that’s how I talk. She, the professor, apparently has some criteria for distinguishing the two that she did not share in her lecture (I’ve also seen essays here and there pointing out subtle differences between the two things, upon which, seemingly, no two scholars agree).

I hope that clears up whatever misunderstanding we are having here.

-Dan